London Road Cemetery

'fraid I don't know Dream, they didn't give me one! Perhaps so they would not be late for work!! Edited by member, 23rd Jun 2020 1:51 pm

My great grandfather manufactured and installed the clock, the cost I think was £10. My mum has a receipt for this will try and find it out. xx

Helen, We know that Cheylesmore Park had a racecourse of some size long before 1861, and before that the London Road railway bridge was built of Derbyshire stone, plus the cemetery was built in a quarry. Could I suggest that after the cholera epidemic of 1831 time, bodies were taken to the common where the gallows were and people had been buried. After 1831 Coventry had to clean up their act, fearing another, around 1845, so called in Paxton to build one. I believe your sketch was the beginning? Would value your thoughts on this.

I think that the sketch was the clearing of the southern half of the current cemetery but they didn't use it immediately. In the 1749 map you can see the winning post for the races although the race route isn't apparent. The only obvious quarry is the one in the middle of the park. There seem to be no quarries in the London Road area but that doesn't mean there weren't any. The main park area had no trees except for along Mile Lane, the road running passed the quarry leading to the Little Park Street Gate and an orchard just outside the New Gate. The park looks like rough grass - common grazing land - crossed by a few foot paths. The area just to the north of the future cemetery was called Old Windmill Hill but by then was missing its mill. By 1805 the park was filling up with hedges and market gardens or allotments. Racing would have been difficult if not impossible. By 1840 the railway had arrived and and the cemetery is marked and the park is crossed by many small tracks/roads. In 1850 it hadn't changed much. By 1888 the whole park was full of trees and marked out as garden plots but the southern half of the cemetery was still vacant. The garden plots extended south of the railway. By 1906 the cemetery was full size and the park is being filled with factories and houses. I'm not sure when the major health movements started in Coventry. The Board of Health Map was obviously part of it. I'm getting information on old buildings demolished from the slum clearances. Some of the health information is in the city's annual reports. Some are viewable at the Welcome Collection - many reports to look at.

Helen, Your sketch above, they’re not clearing gorse, they’re burying people and I suspect from an epidemic from the number of bodies on the ground. The racecourse was well attended, large sums of money passed hands, but a long time before your sketch. On the corner of Brick Kiln Lane was the pub known as the Dog and Gun about 1850. The old coach road ran close to the cemetery, and many coachmen got lost over the common on dark nights. The pulling down of an old house in Little Park Street, to build a vaccine station in the 15th century, must have been the first health signs.

All I can go by is the label on the image, the date and the maps. I know that it's the south part of the cemetery because I can see the spires and the railway line. I've got an unread book from the time period and I get the impression that work was created for desperately poor weavers and this was one of the tasks. Not free welfare that people get now but non essential work with a meagre wage. The maps don't indicate that the southern half of the cemetery was needed at the time. The north side may have indeed been planned because of large mortality numbers. Prior to the creation of this type of cemetery people were interred within church yards. When they ran out of space, they dug people up whether they might have had diseases or not. Some diseases like smallpox survive for years in corpses, which is why they take so much care when they come across a burial ground when digging foundations today. Yes, the vaccine station on LPS was an early health and welfare sign. Built some time between 1850 and 1889.

Robthu, Can someone bury a person and then claim their royalty, if not, is there any laws?

Hi Kaga, I wish I could in some way give you some definitive answers, but you yourself keep pointing out Coventry's (and probably everywhere else's) murky past and goings-on by supposedly upright citizens. I give you James Weare, mayor three times for one. Each time you look into something it brings so much more up, the Newspaper Archive site is a wonderful place, but I don't think it has yet solved for me something conclusively. Take the story of the dog being buried in there and then exhumed. "Fact or fiction" or a bit of each. Don't forget in those days the larger difference between the haves and have nots particularly in education, so pulling the wool over most people's eyes (so to speak) was easy then, people with money were few and looked after each other and these same people were the law as well. A little bit like today, but now I'm getting cynical. Derek. PS. Is there something specific to give me more to go on, answer privately if you wish? Edited by member, 25th Jun 2020 6:01 pm

Not really, but the mods will have to decide about this. Lady Fitzherbert had a beautiful house in Brighton, about 400 yards from the Prince Regent’s palace (Pavilion). It was rumoured they had a tunnel connecting, I never found it, either end. Brighton people said they never ever saw her in a pregnant condition, thought, she couldn't have children. Her house in the 1950's I slept in one time, now altered many times, it was the YMCA. Brighton OAPs got free passes to the Pavilion every winter so could explore. Hence my one time interest.

Robthu, forgot to thank you for your reply. No, nothing of Mayor Weare except he lived where the vaults appeared in Butcher Row 1824 to 26. A little later than Mayor Rew. The Prince Regent owned most of Cheylesmore and so more likely the land that became the cemetery. But became famous when staying as guest at Coombe Abbey with Lord Craven, Mayor Skears Rew and council paid a courtesy call. The Prince, so impressed by the Mayor, knighted him, but couldn't find a sword so did it with a butcher’s knife.

Whitley Common has much to record in its past history. There was a raised circular mound where King Charles' tent is suppose to have been pitched in 1642 during the siege of the city; indications of the first road, between the old and the new roads on the common; the far end of the common they once worked sand. It was customary to bury criminals at the foot of the gallows, and local traditions say the bones of at least one person were ground, mixed with the sand, carried away, and used by the Holyhead Road trust in the building and bedding of Ryton bridge. 1837, and Mr Liggins, who had a mill near Whitley Common, enclosed some of the land and the Freemen's rights and built a wall upon it. By 1839 the Freemen were up in arms about it, met by police, they still pulled it down. The new boundary act had come into force. He took them to the County Court charged with 'riot' at Ansty. A verdict of 'Not Guilty' was returned for all 19 men, Liggins the miller having to pay.

Several times the city was attacked, by King Charles camped outside with 6,000 horsemen where Coventry later built its cemetery, but the walls of the city and its soldiers and citizens held firm, and finally he gave up and moved to Worcester's Powick Bridge. At this time the fields and the woods surrounding Coventry were magnificent countryside.

At Worcester, Colonel Legge was wounded, well known as the King’s rebuff to the citizens of Coventry, he was brought back to the city, thrown in jail, and condemned to be executed. His wife went to see him, changed clothes with him, and he escaped. On 14 Jan 1667, an individual of extraordinary temperament was sent to Coventry gaol, John Temple, brother of Sir Richard Temple, wealthy, member of parliament and whose mother is said to have “seven hundred descendants”, jailed for debts, and he, according to state papers, had no less than seventeen wives. (Sounds fun, till you think of all those mothers-in-law)

Hi all I visited London Road earlier this week - a lot of work going on now from the Lottery Fund grant in conjunction with work on Charterhouse. Happy to report one notable thing I saw was scaffolding around the Riley family grave - looks like they are going to remount the stone cross that had become detached.

When I was a kid in the late forties, early fifties we could access the cemetery via what was then used to store the gardeners’ tools, wheelbarrows, spades etc. It was a scary place and we would make a quick in and out. As I recall, on the cemetery side the entrance was near to the children's memorial wall.